How good is Lavender for Bees really?

A bee-keeping associate of mine told me recently that it's not good to plant lavender for bees as they like it but it's relatively nutrition-poor for them - a bit like feeding them lots of McDonald's if you will.
Is this true? I've had a good root on the etherweb but all I can find seems to be positive stuff about it attracting bees and dissuading the varroa mite.

Cheers.

 

The old English variety is fine for Honey bees , but the newer varieties the bumble bees have longer tongues and can get to the nectar more easily to feed , to say its like MC Donalds made me laugh , beekeepers in Norfolk who have access to acres of lavender wouldn't agree with your "bee keeping associate" its like us the more choices they have on what to feed is all the better .

One key result found by researchers Professor Francis Ratnieks and his PhD student Mihail Gaburzov was that garden flowers attractive to the human eye vary enormously (approx 100-fold) in their attractiveness to insects, meaning that the best plants for bees and other insects are 100 times better than the worst. So it pays to make an informed choice of plants from the thousands available to gardeners.

Bees (87 per cent) and hoverflies (nine per cent) were the most frequent visitors, with butterflies and moths just two per cent and all other insects also two per cent. The researchers observed clear differences in the mix of bee and insect types attracted by different varieties, indicating that careful plant choice can not only help insects in general, but also help a range of insects.

Other findings were:

Some cultivated varieties and non-native flowers – usually seen as ornamental only – can be helpful to wildlife. For example, open dahlias attracted many bees, especially bumblebees, but pom-pom or cactus dahlias attracted few insects, because their highly-bred flowers make it difficult for insects to reach the flowers’ pollen and nectar.
Highly bred varieties of lavender, including those of novel colours, such as white or pink, or hybrid lavenders, proved highly attractive to insects.
Plants that the researchers can recommend to gardeners include lavender, marjoram, open-flowered dahlias, borage, and Bowles Mauve Everlasting Wallflower. Marjoram was probably the best all-rounder, attracting honey bees, bumble bees, other bees, hover flies, and butterflies. Borage was the best for honey bees. Lavender and open-flowered dahlias were very attractive to bumblebees. Bowles mauve was the best for butterflies. But all attracted a range of insects.
The least attractive flowering plant to insects was the pelargonium – a popular garden plant.
The garden perennial plant lamb’s ears (Stachys) was popular with an unusual species of bee, the wool carder bee which, apart from feeding on the flowers, uses the hairs of the plant for nest-building. Male carder bees guard a patch and chase away bees of other species, and other males.

Professor Ratnieks says: “Our trial is by no means exhaustive – we looked at a small selection of the thousands of plants you can find in a typical garden centre. But our study clearly shows that planting pollinator-friendly flowers is a no-cost, win-win solution to help the bees. The plants attractive to bees are just as cheap, easy to grow, and as pretty as those that are less attractive to insects.

 

You should have a wander over our local dunes in mid summer. Its full of all sorts of wild flowers and it looks genuinely stunning. If I could create a garden even half as nice I'd be over the moon. And as for wildlife, its just crazy. Bees of every kind (to my untrained eye at least), the most colourful butterflies, in abundance, dragonflies and damselflies, funny little black and red moth things. Not one or two, thousands of them.

They're all interested in the clovers and vetches and willowherbs and who knows what else. Nobody planted it. It just sort of appeared. The sand colonised by first the really hardy stuff, which then lives out its life and decays, adding organic matter to make very sandy soil, then however nature does it (seeds in bird poo, seeds on the wind I guess), all sorts of flowers have just put themselves there. It seems a bit daft really. Nature can do that on her own, yet we spend loads of time and money on our gardens and generally don't achieve anything quite like it.

 

I've been wanting to plant a lavender bush; an old village cottage and no lavender...! The bushes at my mums have always had lots of bees, I always assumed lavender was a good bee bush

 

I planted 8 Lavender bushes last year, 2 Cotton, 4 English and 2 French.

My main reason for planting them was for the bees, the only lavender I see any bees on was the French, they seemed to ignore the English and cotton. They seemed to prefer the foxgloves and erysimum bowles.

 

I didn't know bees were meant to like cotton lavender

 

Going purely by my own observations, when it comes to bees in my garden, plain old common sage and nasturtium both compete for the title of most bees present in one go.

 

My Sedums (Ice plants) are always covered in them.

 

plus its a good late flowering variety that really helps Sheal

 

The most successful bee plants in my garden last year were antirrhinums, agastache, Chinese Forget me nots and linaria followed by nasturtiums and borage. They prefered french lavender and seemed not to like red flowers, even red antirrhinums. Is it true @Spruce that bees can't see the colour red?

 

i hadn't noticed the bees on my french lavender but my nastursiums were covered in them.

 

@Fern4 good question fern , easy answer for me

No they can’t see the color red, but they can see in the ultraviolet spectrum (which humans cannot)
The "antirrhinums flower" honey bees are not strong enough to open the flower up, not like bumble bees who have no problem at all much bigger and stronger you will have to watch in the summer what they do to get in

 

Ahh that explains it then! Their favorite color seemed to be purples, mauves, and blues and they didn't mind yellows, oranges and whites. I'm growing antirrhinums again this year so I'll be watching!

 

I had a bee buzzing around my side bed yesterday (on the rare occasion it wasn't raining). Obviously, the lavenders are not in flower, but his fella was really excited about a yellow crocus I have flowering (but not now the rain is back it isn't!)